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Schools 'report card' trips on wealth data

Farrah Tomazin

THE Federal Government says it will push ahead with plans to publish controversial school-by-school test results, despite not yet having information it had promised to parents about the wealth of each school.

Education Minister Julia Gillard has repeatedly said parents will soon be able to know the fees and finances of every public and private school in the country, through a new website that will also compare the academic performance of schools with similar student populations. But The Age has learnt that the push to force schools to fully disclose their income has hit a stumbling block, because of difficulties obtaining comparable data from the states and territories.

This means that when the Government unveils its new online school performance ''report card'' in January, parents are likely to get access only to results in national literacy and numeracy tests - not to the comparative wealth of each school. That data will be published later.

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The move is set to inflame tension about the Government's so-called ''transparency agenda'', which critics say could lead to league tables that name and shame underperforming schools.

Teachers and principals argue that by initially publishing academic data without ''contextual'' school information, such as its resources, parents will get a skewed picture of their child's education. But Ms Gillard defended the decision to publish results even if the financial data was not initially available. She made no apologies for pushing ahead with the reporting system, which the Government argues will help direct more resources to struggling schools.

She said the challenges of compiling data on the resourcing of schools ''should not delay the publication of comprehensive information about how our schools are going and which schools need a hand''.

Education ministers met in Brisbane this week to discuss the new reporting system, under which schools will be grouped according to the backgrounds of their students and then compared by their performance in the national literacy and numeracy test, which is taken every year by children in years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

Ministers at the meeting agreed that the national website would eventually provide data on school resources, and ultimately ''paint a picture of the context in which a school operates, including the characteristics of its student population, teacher numbers and other important student outcomes''.

But Australian Primary Principals Association president Leonie Trimper said financial data should be provided immediately. ''The resources a school accesses are a critical part of their performance. If the Government really wants to tell a fair story about schools, their funding has to be part of that story.''